[open] the caring and keeping of trollish sentiment

[uncodlyawwesome]

Who: Eridan Ampora and you!
What: Someone is acting TOTALLY NORMAL about a DUMB HUMAN HOLIDAY.
When: February, thru Valentine's Day
Where: The cabin hallway, Mikabo, and the promenade
Warnings: None so far, will update if necessary
Notes: Eridan's mostly active from 4pm to 5am. there's a 50/50 chance he'll decide to simp over your character regardless of who they are... tis the season!

1a. [Cabin 160] the art of exterior decorating
[Eridan opens his door one evening early in February and walks right into a smattering of chintzy paper hearts and glittery red streamer. the first few seconds of flailing are a trigger response to feeling something almost but not entirely like the Bahanamal touch his head. the next few minutes are a more purposeful tantrum as he furiously rips the cheap decor down, complete with meticulously tearing up a heart and then stomping on the remains. he glares around the hall, but he doesn't know anyone well enough for them to pull this kind of miserable stunt on him. nobody here even knows about his painfully scorned love life except for Karkat and Nepeta, and neither of them hate him this much.

that doesn't stop him from giving anyone nearby an absolutely devestating stink-eye as he destroys more Valentine's decor. Yeah, you over there, eyeballing him, he sees you! If you had anything to do with this, you better fess the fuck up or mind your own goddamn business!!!]

2. [Mikabo] the art of custom sushi rolls
[he thinks he's safe when he makes it all the way up to the Promenade without seeing any massive displays of hearts or other flushed symbolism. there are a few places with familiar hearts plastered to the wall and stuff like that, but nothing on the level of his own door.

unfortunately, he's quickly reminded of the situation as he sits down for breakfast/dinner and is met with a rotating selection of HEART-SHAPED SUSHI, many covered with an UNIDENTIFIED PINK SAUCE. the normal options are few and far between, and even the sashimi comes out curled into heart shapes around lumps of wasabi.

it turns out that the PINK SAUCE is actually just mayonnaise with color added to it, but still. weird..

he stares at whoever enters while he's there, as usual, but he's decidedly not accusatory when he asks:] Just wwhat the fuck is goin' on, here?!

1b. [Cabin 160] the art of investigating a crime
[it seems like no matter what Eridan decides to do, he's destined to return to a door decorated in flush red hearts and pale pink diamonds. (they're actually just badly shaped stars, but nobody tell him, he's having a moment.) he tears everything down with the same vigor the first few times, but that doesn't seem to stop the paper flowers and glossy plastic streamers from adorning the frame. now that the anger and outrage have given way to confusion, he's not tearing things apart so much as he is carefully examining each piece as he removes it.

he doesn't seem to notice if anyone's watching this time around, mostly because he is deeply dedicated to his new human holiday research. it's fucking weird, is what he's getting.] Wwhat do angels havve to do wwith matespritship? And the mortal wwounds... wwhat does that mean?

3. [All Over] the art of cultural osmosis
[this investigation eventually expands from his cabin to the ship as a whole. there's a non-zero chance that you might encounter him staring critically at a random Valentine's day arrangement, as if trying to analyze a particularly obscure bit of modern art. he treats them as if they're up for grabs, and occasionally plucks one off the walls -- usually ones with pictures of cartoon fish with shitty slogans like "I REELY like you" or "It's o-FISH-al, I'm HOOKED on you!"

(look, being fish-themed is a full-time gig!)]

[wildcard] the art of making shit up as we go
(throw whatever you want at the fishboy, or hmu for plotting!!!)

Comments

[uncodlyawwesome]

[as far as he's concerned, every single one of these is worse than the last, and they're all equally terrible. (he is not thinking about how Fef would probably think these are all ---EXTREMELY CUT--E -- nope, no time to think about Fef at all! not with all these conversations about hearts and diamonds to have!!!)

(ugh.)]

Y'knoww, 'cos flushed and pale affections are basically intertwwined, sometimes evven impossible to really differentiate... Oh. Right... humans don't really do quadrants, do you.

[skaikru]

( amazing how information that's deemed unnecessary and unimportant locks itself away until a proverbial key is offered in the middle of a conversation. clarke's actually already gotten the quadrant rundown from karkat, in the middle of a ddr battle for a game of truth or dare! it was just subsequently overshadowed by the story of gamzee makara's massacre. but now it's back! )

Ooooh, ( the sound of recognition, o stretched out and accompanied by a small nod. ) Right. Red, pale, ashen, and black, right?

Humans do all those things, we just don't call them that.

[uncodlyawwesome]

[(roommate.vine voice) oh my god she already knows about quadrants.]

O-Oh. Uh. Yeah. [oh no he wasn't ready for this????] But they're -- y'knoww. Different from wwhat you think they are. Probably. [fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck --] Or maybe not. I don't knoww wwhat you think you knoww.

[NAILED IT this is going so well]

[skaikru]

( survival is rooted in adaptability, and same way clarke joined in a grounder war chant demanding blood, occasionally peppers groovy and tbh into her vocabulary because of diana abel and sharky boshaw respectively, and has replaced ghosts with revenants in her vocabulary — the alternian lexicon comes easy. )

My understanding was flushed equals your lover, pale equals your best friend, maybe with a side of codependence. A blackrom is a sort of symbiotic rivalry? I didn't catch if you're supposed to be attracted to them too. Then ashen is a sort of neutral ground mediator.

Am I far off?

idgaf if any of these words are spelled wrong, troll romance is dumb

[uncodlyawwesome]

[okay... so like. kind of right but not exactly. he would usually be more outright dismissive of the flub about romance vs friendship, but 1) Clarke was cool to him when she didn't need to be and 2) she's cute, sooooo...]

Lemme guess, Kar gavve you all that. [saying it like he wasn't literally panicking about being around Karkat the last time they talked...] Kismesitude -- black romance -- isn't just a symbiotic rivvalry, it's... wwell, yeah okay sure, but it's more than that. It's about balance. About knowwin' that there's someone out there wwhose only desire is to provve howw much more cunnin', smart, and powwerful they are than you. They force you to stay sharp, keep you from fallin' into some kinda flushed complacency wwhere you're fine bein' nothin' but coddled by some wwell-meanin' but inevvitably unbalanced matesprit.

But then you gotta havve an auspistice to keep lesser rivvals from infringin' on the bond shared betwween twwo kismesises. Otherwwise you're just gonna wwind up courtin' infidelity an' death.

[explaining things is hard. he just wants people to get it so he doesn't have to do the hard work! man, he really should just let Karkat and Nepeta handle this.]

Also, moirails aren't just best friends. It's wway more than that.

[skaikru]

( clarke listens, but also kinda... squints. because even with eridan's expansions on facts, she feels she got pretty close on the money with her own definitions. maybe it's a failing in the subtext, like when one says friend and friend with different intonations, knowing the definitive line of difference in their heart but never quite able to put it into words.

but she's open to listening to him as much as she had been karkat. and will weave the definitions from both conversations together in hopes of better understanding it in the future, but for now.

moirails she thinks she gets. thinks of bellamy blake. thinks of natsuno yuuki. you know, the friends she'd die for, kill for, and potentially die without. ) Okay, that I think I get. But we'd still just call them best friends.

And kiss —...kismesitude ( the pronunciation is careful and pointed; she's trying very hard to get it right ) sounds like a thin line between motivating and competition. Wouldn't it'd get exhausting after a while?

[uncodlyawwesome]

[it's subtle, but this conversation is bringing some wall or another down in Eridan, as he slowly sort of half-relaxes against the card display. all the pufferfishing around is getting set aside for the intellectual conversation at hand.

yeah, this is considered intellectual by his standards. they aren't very high.]

I guess if that makes it easier... [the real comparison would be "soulmates," but Eridan's got no idea what that is, so the whole thing will have to die out there.]

Wwhat's exhaustin' about shared mutual hatred? A good kismesis energizes you in a fight. [lowkey scoffing,] You wwouldn't say the same thing about flushed affection, I bet.

[skaikru]

( if not entirely intellectual, it's a decent philosophical debate. and clarke hasn't had one of those outside of actual, real dilemmas since mizuki disappeared, so! )

You know how much energy it takes to really hate someone? Of course it's exhausting. Constantly fighting is hard, it wears down your soul.

But a romantic relationship can do that too. Pouring your time, and affection, and hopes into another person. Trying to build something, making promises, learning to respect each other completely... And then sometimes you do all that just to learn it was doomed to fail from the beginning, so. ( a shrug. she picks up another card, but is only half focused on the kitten design on the front. )

[uncodlyawwesome]

Not wwith a kismesis. An' it's not like you're alwways fightin'. There's dowwntime, y'knoww, wwhere you plot against 'em and fantasize about howw you're gonna showw 'em up.

[ugh, but of course she's going to prove him wrong by shit-talking red romance, and from seemingly personal experience, to boot! personal experience that resembles his own, if he squints and looks sidewways at it.

...he just sorta looks at the card she's holding onto. "you're the cat's meow" makes no fucking sense to him, but maybe Nep would like it??]

All romance is like that. Pretty much not wworth the time an' energy. You put yourself out there, make yourself vvulnerable an' open yourself up to the unfathomable mysteries of destiny -- and then they're like, actually, I prefer this loser ovver here.

[as he aggressively pokes a cute bumblebee card. you know. totally at random.]

[skaikru]

( eridan, and eridan alone/i> will be responsible for clarke's eventual intrusive thought of oh, do i have a one-sided kismesis with the captain? at least once a day i imagine making his world, hopes, and dreams crumble around him as he's forced to watch. ugh. gross. hate that. and yet!

...anyway, in the end she tucks the cat card into the crook of her elbow instead of putting it back. rita likes cats. )

More or less. ...sometimes. It's. This holiday is so stupid.

( but there's also a box of disgustingly garish heart-covered notebooks just around the side of the endcap display, and she's picking up three of those after wondering if palamedes might need any for his notes. )

The best friend quadrant is better anyway. Easier.

( but natsuno's still occasionally vomiting solar flares, so she's not about to hunt down a card that says you are my sunshine. )

...can you have more than one moirail?

[uncodlyawwesome]

[he has his own opinions on which quadrant is easiest -- that is, none of them, romance is impossible for nice guys like him -- but he manages to keep his kismesis-bias to himself. (even the lustre of a blackrom has worn off a bit since he got unceremoniously murked, although that's more because of self-serving pity than anything.)

her question completely distracts him, and he squints like he's trying to figure out if she's serious. but, duh, of course she is. she thinks it means best friends. someone to hang out and watch movies with, to share gossip with and vent to.]

That wwould completely undermine the por -- purpose. [NO CHEAP FISH PUNS ALLOWED] It's... fate. Someone wwho's destined to wwatch ovver you, protect you, keep you in line. You're compelled to make sure they don't givve into their vviolent instincts, safeguard their feelings. Y'knoww. Protect 'em. It's...

[I am really sorry. it's just been so hard looking after you. it's taken its toll, and honestly, I'm exhausted. it will be the best for both of us. we can just sort of be...

regular friends, instead.]

...Fuckin' stupid. Wwhat do I knoww? Sure. Havve as many coddamn moirails as you can stomach. Not like it's a limited resource or anythin'.

[he's trying super hard not to look like he's flashing back to a bitter breakup. it, uh. it's probably not working the way he hopes.]

[skaikru]

( she's squinting a little as he sets off on the more vivid description of moirails, because yeah that all still sounds like best friends. because clarke's thinking pretty expressly about bellamy and blake and natsuno yuuki. the former might not be here physically anymore, but he's still very much here in her soul and can never be completely abandoned, even if his role in her life has been more or less adopted by the latter. they are both: someone she'd kill for, someone she'd die for, someone she trusted, someone who kept her centered, and someone she could always rely on to keep her safe. someone she'd lie for, though also on occasion lie to. someone way more important to her than herself, but without any of the gross complications of romantic feelings.

both are arguably more important relationships than those with lexa kom trikru and palamedes sextus.

but the more eridan talks, the more it becomes apparent to clarke that it's no longer about her and her multiple moirails. and that's fine and good, but is he fine and good? she hadn't intended to trip over any internal landmines. this feels like a prime opportunity to bite her tongue and disengage or distract from the conversation, but instead. at the end of his mopey tirade: )

...are you okay?

[uncodlyawwesome]

[her question is like a warning shot across the bow, reminding him that he's in a completely different place with none of the previous baggage of his old life. nobody here knows about his failed relationships with (checks notes) everyone in his life, and if he would just play it fuckin' cool for once, then this new status quo can continue uninterrupted. Feferi who? never heard of her!

all he has to do is respond in a clam calm, dignified manner.]

Fine! [he immediately throws his hands in the air,] I'm obvviously fine! I'm just -- [oh shit what is he doing. he quickly grabs a card at random; it's got a shitty drawing of an anchor on it, and the predictable byline of "you are my anchor" scrawled across in a vaguely piratey font.] -- you knoww, distracted by shitty nautical puns!

[skaikru]

( right. so.

that's a no.

and on a hunch, clarke steps forward to pull that anchor card from eridan's fingers and makes to slide it back into the shelving at random, zero regard for whoever might have to come by and fix the display. ) Okay. How about we just leave the card puns behind and go somewhere else.

[uncodlyawwesome]

[he is having a perfectly normal reaction to this conversation and all of the Valentine's Day shit. this is like, super, totally not a weird way to react to a conversation he basically started!

he just kind of watches her put the card back like she's taking a bomb out of his hands. that was such a stupid fuckin' attempt to save his dignity! he should have just run away. cowardice is better than stupidity any day of the week! ugh. now he has to come up with something cool to say so he doesn't look like even more of a total loser in front of Clarke!!!]

...Like... and hang out??

[wow.]

[skaikru]

( oh.

huh.

yanno she'd admittedly not thought that far ahead when suggesting they remove themselves from sundries. it coulda just been a "detach from the card display and go their separate ways" moment, and clarke would have likely sought out something productive to do on her own — like staking out tauva, or endeavoring towards making a cheese bun. but eridan seems like he's stewing, and it doesn't feel right to just leave him like that. so! )

If you want to. Maybe this Valentines day mess hasn't infiltrated Sand Dollars yet.

( oh it 110% has. )